Anake

We began this week with a 30-minute figure four trap challenge. We were to find appropriate sticks, whittle them to the right shapes, set the trap with appropriate deadfalls, and trigger the trap within 30 minutes. One person met the 30 minute challenge! The rest of us took more time adjusting the cuts to the three sticks and fiddling with our weights.

For any who have never interacted with primitive traps, here is a diagram of an idealized figure 4 deadfall and it's component sticks, to offer some clarity (illustration from Wikimedia Commons):


I missed the previous lesson on traps, and had to watch others and pick up what I could. I did not have the luxury of a diagram or explicit instructions. Still, with everyone around me carving their sticks in the same way, and a little observation on my part, I was able to make a serviceable deadfall. My trap only took 45 minutes from setting out to search for sticks, to triggering the final deadfall with a nudge to the bait stick.


Pictured below is the winner for quickest, most primitive, and most easily triggered trap. The trap's maker found and carved the sticks in under 15 minutes, and used no knife. Instead, a rough rock served to rasp away wood in the right places. The trap stood for just over two minutes on it's own. A gust of wind blew it down right after I snapped this picture, and the falling weight crushed one of the sticks.


Next, we switched our focus to another important survival skill: finding potable water. We went questing up Wish Creek looking for a source of water coming straight out of rock or soil. One group took pots and jars and experienced the extreme frustration of finding the source on high ground and having to negotiate challenging terrain with full vessels. They brought back most of the water in their clothing.


We also experimented with surface wells. We found a place in the creekbed, much closer to camp, where the water flowed down and disappeared into the soil. We dug next to the flow. The holes we dug sank well below the bottom of the creekbed and struck soupy chocolate-colored mud. As we watched, clear water swirled in from the upstream side of the well. Would this water be sufficiently filtered by the few inches of earth through which it flowed? Our next step is to get some water test kits and find out.

...

After an evening of stories from JY and a failed attempt at rock-boiling a large quantity of our collected water, it was time to greet the Anakes.

The Anake Outdoor School (formerly known as the Wilderness Awareness School Residential Program) had been traveling for the better part of a week, come all the way from Duvall, Washington. We had prepared a song to welcome them to our land, and we circled our fire and practiced our welcome. With night settled heavy and nearly moonless, the stars blazed their greetings all the brighter.

Outside the gate, the Anakes had gathered and howled now like wolves, a wild sound from the dark. We gathered at the gate and gave our coyote yips and wails in response. Silence, some argument over who was to start ("1-2-3-not-it!"). The Anakes launched into their song of greeting, still unseen across the gate but felt in the body-resonance of pulsing drums and stomping feet. When the last beat and whoop echoed off the ridges, we paused, replied with our song, and opened the gate.

In darkness and firelight we gathered both groups, circled, greeted, and went to bed.


We started the next morning with a bird sit. The Anakes, looking with eyes new to the landscape, brought fresh perspectives to our sit. We came back in, breakfasted and wrote out bird maps together. The greenhouse was exceptionally lively.


After the sit we divided into groups by Society for our all-day wander. The Anake's East Society paired with our RDNA East people, the RDNA Souths went with the Anake Souths, and so on.


We didn't get reports from each Society afterward, but some patterns emerged anyway. The Norths, for example, focused on trees. The Southwests made sure to take a nap in the afternoon. And the Souths, of which I was a member, found a mammal.


We hunkered down, poking and prodding our find. What exactly was it? Not a rodent, considering the sharp, burgundy-pointed teeth and long pointy snout. We settled on Sorex spp, but still had many questions. What brought him out onto the hillside? The patchy chaparral and grass stretched up and down the ridge, open and dry. How long was he dead? He was limp, not stiff. Fly eggs on the carcass had not yet hatched. How had he been killed? some blood spots flecked the carcass, we saw no punctures or wounds.

As we examined the minute mammal, robin and kinglet alarms began erupting on the opposite ridge. Some of our number began scanning the horizon. Minutes passed, and silence settled. We all looked up from our mammal in time to see a large accipiter with a long rounded tail and short blunt wings flap it's way across the valley and then disappear to the north. Moments after the hawk's passage, song began to fill in the valley from the south, and we went back to our mammal mystery.


With no answers to many of our questions, we made what seemed at the time to be a logical decision. We skinned and dissected the little carcass.


The next day, Native Eyes departed. We left with more inspiration to tap into our wild, quiet mind, to dance and drum and sing the hearbeat of our land, to know our places as natives and draw our sustenance from our land. And it seemed to me that our Anake comrades came away with more bird language questions, more love for the land, and enriched by one shrew-pelt nosewarmer.